Danish/American hard rockers ROYAL HUNT will release their twelfth studio album, “A Life To Die For”, in November through Marquee/Avalon (Japan and Southeast Asia) and Frontiers (Europe and North America). The material has been described as a continuation of the band’s last CD, “Show Me How To Live”, but with new elements in in both the songwriting and production departments. The cover artwork was created by Kai Brockschmidt (PINK CREAM 69, PRETTY MAIDS) and can be seen below.

“A Life To Die For” will be mde available in three different versions:

01. Hell Comes Down From Heaven
02. A Bullet’s Tale
03. Running Out Of Tears
04. One Minute Left To Live
05. Sign Of Yesterday
06. Won’t Trust, Won’t Fear, Won’t Beg
07. A Life To Die For

In order to upgrade its trademark sound, ROYAL HUNT employed a large number of classical/orchestra players in the studio as well as a large choir.

Frontiers Records released ROYAL HUNT‘s box set, “20th Anniversary – Special Edition”, on November 23, 2012 in Europe and January 21, 2013 in North America.

After the highly successful 20th-aniversary tour in support of ROYAL HUNT‘s last album, “Show Me How To Live”, ROYAL HUNT decided to celebrate the occasion with a very special “best-of” package containing three CDs and one DVD. The release included the best ROYAL HUNT songs from all 11 albums, a brand new song plus three newly recorded acoustic versions of three additional tracks and a DVD featuring all the promotional video clips shot by the band during their long ride.

Metal-Trails.com conducted an interview with guitarist Ken Hammer of Danish hard rockers PRETTY MAIDS at this year’s Wacken Open Air festival, which was held August 1-3 in Wacken, Germany. You can now watch the chat below.

PRETTY MAIDS‘ latest album, “Motherland”, was released on March 22 in Europe and March 26 in North America via Frontiers Records.

After their successful and highly acclaimed 2010 album “Pandemonium”, PRETTY MAIDS celebrated their 30th anniversary with their debut visual release, “It Comes Alive (Maid in Switzerland)”, in 2012. “Pandemonium” showed the world that PRETTY MAIDS were in a creative spring again, with the band in their finest moment. The melodic approach brought a return to the “Future World” / “Red Hot And Heavy” era of the Eighties, but with an updated sound and freshness that consolidated PRETTY MAIDS as strong as ever.

In late spring 2012, the band gathered to finally write the follow-up album. Singer Ronnie Atkins explained: “We knew it was going to be a tough one to follow. I remember back in the day when we had to follow-up albums like ‘Future World’, we tried more or less to copy the songs from the previous album to keep the same kind of balance. But this time we just wrote what came natural to us and that’s what became ‘Motherland’.”

The band teamed up again with producer Jacob Hansen (VOLBEAT, AMARANTHE) for the new CD. Ronnie said: “Jacob was a natural choice since we had a great experience with him producing the ‘Pandemonium’ album. The recordings went smooth to begin with, but then we had to start touring again during the weekends and this created some stress. Though I really feel strongly about ‘Motherland’. In my view, it has all the ingredients of a good PRETTY MAIDS album, maybe even more melodic than ‘Pandemonium’ and absolutely, as far as I’m concerned a worthy follow-up.”

German power metallers PRIMAL FEAR have begun mixing their new album with Jacob Hansen (VOLBEAT, PRETTY MAIDS, DESTRUCTION) at his Hansen studio in Ribe, Denmark for a January 2014 release via Frontiers Records. 12 songs were recorded during the new CD sessions, including “two epic songs, one guitar ballad, and nine crushing metal songs with all the trademarks you know and love to hear from PRIMAL FEAR,” according to the band. The CD was engineered by Achim Köhler (EDGUY, MASTERPLAN) and is being produced by PRIMAL FEAR bassist Mat Sinner.

In a recent interview with Jump Metal, PRIMAL FEAR vocalist Ralf Scheepers stated about the musical direction of the band’s upcoming album: “It’s not so far away [from what we’ve done in the past], because we have our style, you know. It was hard for us to imagine… because [2012’s] ‘Unbreakable’ was a pretty tough… and really, in our ears, pretty great album, and for us, it was somehow hard to top it. But as soon as we started to write the new songs, and as soon as I heard what Mat and Magnus [Karlsson, guitar] did in the first place — because then they sent me some stuff and I added my ideas on it — I just thought, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ And in the end, it really turned out to be a better album than ‘Unbreakable’.”

Frontiers and PRIMAL FEAR in January announced that they have renewed their partnership for another multi-album deal, which will include two more studio releases and one live CD and DVD.

PRIMAL FEAR‘s latest album, “Unbreakable”, sold around 600 copies in the United States in its first week of release. The CD landed at position No. 44 on the Top New Artist Albums (Heatseekers) chart, which lists the best-selling albums by new and developing artists, defined as those who have never appeared in the Top 100 of The Billboard 200.

For the heavy metal fan on the go, every week we collect the latest reviews in one convenient location, and keep them short and sweet. This week, check out our takes on albums from Amaranthe, Ash Borer, Carved, Cnoc An Tursa, The Color Morale, Dark Sermon, De La Cruz, High Priest Of Saturn, King Carnage, Kruna, Lustre, Odd Dimension, Orchid’s Curse, Pretty Maids, Trollfest, Victor Griffin, Voodoo Circle and Wormed.

Danish hard rock/traditional metal act Pretty Maids posted a music video for the new track “Mother of All Lies.” The song appears on the band’s forthcoming new LP “Motherland,” due out on Frontiers Records on March 22, 2013 (EU) and March 26, 2012 in North America.